


Identification Or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Correct Operational Procedures to be Observed Upon the Discovery of a Violent Homocide

by frankie_mcstein



Category: Psych
Genre: Horror, Pre-Series, almost every original character dies, fight for survival, hitchhiking!Shawn, i can't tag, if this were a film, it would be an 18, long title is long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-01-11 17:36:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1175936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frankie_mcstein/pseuds/frankie_mcstein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hitchhiking in the rain=  Bad idea</p>
<p>Getting a ride from a homicidal maniac=  Worse idea</p>
<p>Stopping for the night in a motel full of potential victims= Worst idea in the history of bad ideas</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. How I Met The Sociapathic Killer

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on the psychfic archive after my darling Star requested a fic with Shawn hitchhiking. I kinda.... ran with it. It's loosely based on Identity, for those of you who have seen it and spot the similarities. Pay attention to the tags. Psychfic had to add a horror genre for this to be posted there.   
> This is not for the faint hearted.

It was awful weather. He was pretty sure he was the only person out without at least three layers of waterproof clothing on. The wind was cruelly cold and the rain was hitting him hard enough to hurt. He had to keep his head down to protect his eyes from the stinging of the water, not that there was any reason to keep his head up; he couldn’t see much of anything through the sheets of water falling.

At least the clothes in his bag would be dry thanks to everything being wrapped in carrier bags. He wanted to smile at the irony of being thankful for something his dad had taught him, but his cheeks were frozen. He actually might have been smiling, he really couldn’t tell.

The simple act of putting one foot in front of the other had never seemed harder to him before, and he had been in some sorry states, especially over the last few years. Travelling round whatever state or even country he wanted to, doing what he wanted to; it had sounded perfect. It was an escape and an adventure and just what he thought he needed.

He hadn’t counted on it being quite so lonely. Sure he made friends easily, and getting work of some sort was pretty easy as long as he wasn’t too fussy, but even so, living from day to day really wasn’t as glamorous as he had been lead to believe. He wasn’t sure quite who had led him believe this, but he was sure someone had, and whoever it was, they had lied.

It wasn’t like him to give in to depression; he tended to hide it behind hyperactivity that left most people panting for breath just from listening to him talk. There were a few people in the world that would recognise that something was wrong, but they were countless states away. So when he suggested parties, or festivals, or all night poker games, his temporary friends were happy to agree. Of course, all he really got out of it were sleep deprivation headaches and hangovers.

He groaned as he remembered the previous week, or rather, as much of the previous week as he could after he filtered through the alcohol fuelled haze that hung over most of his memories. He wondered which tequila sunrise it was that was responsible for landing him in this mess. He was sure it had to be the fault of one of the drinks; he would never do something so stupid without help.

The hangover from the previous few days worth of clubbing was making his vision swim a little and the pain in his head was making him stomach churn slightly. He really shouldn’t have been driving; he had known that when he had woken up in his motel room with no memory of how he got back, or who the four other people in the room were. But he had decided it was time to move on and he was too stubborn to take some time to let his body recover.

For a brief moment he was actually tempted to look back and see if he could still see his poor bike in the distance, but he had been walking for over an hour and resisted the silly temptation. Letting her get so low on fuel was one thing, it was what the reserve tank was for. But forgetting to turn the reserve tank off after refilling was unforgivable.

“So here I am,” he muttered to himself, turning as he heard a car approaching and holding out his thumb hopefully. “Hitchhiking across the states.” He actually managed a huff of laughter at that one, but it died as the car pulled level, then passed. He had noticed the female driver locking the doors as she got closer to him; how bad did he look anyway?

The thought faded, to be replaced with more pressing matters. His feet were practically numb, but they were still aching fiercely and he thought he could feel his knees starting to shake. He wasn’t sure if it was the cold, the hangover, the lack of sleep, or maybe even the lack of decent food, but either way he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be able to walk much further.

A bright flash made him wince and duck, and he suddenly realised that the dull thudding noise he had thought was in his ears, wasn’t actually a dull thudding noise at all. He stopped walking and forced himself to pay attention. Sure enough, a deep rumble rolled around the air, another blinding flash slicing through the premature darkness. Of course, it would be an all out storm. Getting caught in a rainstorm just wasn’t enough; he had to get flash fried by lightning too.

He wondered idly if it would be better to be struck down by something more interesting that your average everyday lightning bolt, like ball lightning. He was actually getting quite involved the debate when a little voice that sounded a lot like Gus’ informed him that he was still outside in the middle of a storm, still freezing and aching all over, and not even moving anymore.

He came out of himself with an odd surge that he could almost feel, only to find the voice was right, he was indeed standing still in the middle of a storm. A low rumble had him shielding his eyes ready for the next painfully bright flash, but it never came. Instead he heard a low beep and spun round to see an old truck pulling up behind him.

The driver’s window rolled down and a voice came floating out.

“Need a ride?”

He never thought he’d be so glad to hear three words in his life. He ran the few steps to the truck, the passenger door was opened before he got there, and he threw himself happily into the seat, so grateful to be out of the rain he didn’t even look at the driver.

“Thanks, dude,” he said, trying to rub his hair dry with his hands. “I didn’t think anyone would stop.”

“Makes no difference to me if I stop or not.” The truck was thrown in to gear with a violent movement that he caught out of the corner of his eye. He let his gaze follow the line of the man’s arm, taking in the bulge on the top of his chest that he immediately saw was too small to be a gun.

Knowing the man carried a knife didn’t make him feel any better and he felt a small knot of nervousness begin to tie itself in his stomach.

“I’m Shawn,” he offered, careful to keep his voice level as he took in the greasy hair, the dull eyes, and the small twitch in the corner of the jaw. He thought of holding out a hand, but noticed the man’s knuckles were white with the force of their grip on the wheel, and besides, his own hands were cold and wet.

“Dwight,” came the reply, and the voice sounded gruffer than it had before. Shawn cast about for something else to say, but his brain refused to cooperate and by the time sentences started running thorough his head again, they had been sitting in silence for over ten minutes. The longer they sat and said nothing, the more awkward he felt about breaking the silence. The icebreakers running through his mind started to sound more and more ridiculous, and after another five minutes of silence, he resigned himself to not talking.

The truck’s heating was running on full and Shawn soon started to feel warm again, although it did nothing to dry his clothes and the clinging of the material soon started to make him even more uncomfortable than the silence.

Dwight, for all that he appeared to be focused entirely on the road, obviously didn’t miss Shawn’s increasingly dramatic fidgeting.

“There’s a motel few more miles down. We can stop there.” His tone of voice made it clear that didn’t really care if Shawn wanted to stop or not, but the idea of changing his clothes was so appealing, Shawn couldn’t have cared less. He stopped staring aimlessly out of the window and fixed his eyes instead on the odometer, watching as the numbers ticked over and wondering how far Dwight’s idea of a few miles was.

He drifted for a few minutes, remembering trips with his dad where a few miles had translated as hours in the truck. When his mum had come along it was said with a wink and a sideways look at his dad that had always made him laugh. He focused on the memories as a distraction; despite the warmth in the truck, he was starting to shiver again, and it was with a feeling of real shock that he realised Dwight’s few miles really was just a few miles.

As the number six ticked over to show seven Shawn looked back to the window to see the sign for the motel no more than 10 yards away. The rain blurred the light, but even so he could make out the word ‘vacancy’ and there was no hint of a ‘no’ anywhere. Soon he would be standing in a hot shower, with clean dry clothes waiting for him. A happy sigh escaped him at the thought and he looked towards the reception, fingers already straying towards his wallet. He didn’t notice the odd look Dwight threw him.

As they pulled up to the door, Shawn wrapped the strap of his backpack around his wrist, not wanting the additional chill of the soaked material on his back, and turned to Dwight.

“You need a hand with anything, dude?” He hid his relief as Dwight shook his head; all he wanted to do was find that shower he had been thinking about.

“I just need to get my wallet. Go on.” He didn’t look up from his search as Shawn took a deep breath to steal himself against the rain, or when he threw open the door. But as soon as the door slammed shut, Dwight’s head snapped up and his eyes narrowed as they followed Shawn’s progress to the doorway. They dropped again as he stepped inside, lingering on the glove box before he reached over and opened it. He stretched out a hand and caressed the gun before lifting it out and unclipping the magazine. He ran his thumb over the first bullet, feeling a surge of power as he thought of the damage it would do.

He let his eyes drift closed as he pictured the white flash of the gunpowder against a background of deep, dark red. He took a deep breath and imagined he could smell the cordite. He slipped the magazine back into the pistol, then racked it and flipped the gun to the side, catching the bullet as it was ejected. He slid it into his shirt pocket, carefully buttoning it closed. That one was being reserved for someone special.

A flicker of light caught his eye and he looked up to see Shawn step out of the reception and sprint across the parking lot. He shoved the gun into his waistband, grabbed his wallet, and jumped out of the cab, suddenly realising he must have lost track of time. The last thing he wanted was to attract attention, and sitting alone in his truck in the dark was definitely going to attract attention.

After the warmth of his truck the chill of the rain hit him like a physical blow despite his thick jacket and he ran to the door of the reception area. The man behind the counter didn’t look up as he burst in, waiting until Dwight was standing at the counter before raising his eyes from the book he was holding.

“Need a single yeah? Kid who was just here told me you were on your way in. Rate’s $39 a night.” Dwight nodded, and a key was pushed over to him before he even managed to take his driver’s license and credit card out of his wallet.

“Number 7, three doors down on the left.”

Dwight fiddled with the plastic tag on the key that declared the room number while the man, whose nametag said he would answer to Joshua, fiddled with the ancient looking copier. Finally, after several minutes of beeps and clicks, his cards were handed back to him and he turned to leave. The door closed on Joshua’s call of,

“The restaurant’s open for another hour yet.”

He went straight to his room and locked the door, checking the lock twice before taking the gun out of his waistband. He had seen three other cars in the parking lot, which meant that if he counted the receptionist and Shawn, there were at least five other people there. He closed his eyes and imagined he could hear them. A smile spread over his face as he pictured how they would look in the last second of life that he would grant them.

O__-__O__-__O__-__O

Shawn was sleeping restlessly. As soon as he had reached his room he had started tugging off his soaked clothes, stopping only long enough to switch on the heater. He had caught a brief glimpse of a shadow moving past his room and assumed it was Dwight. Then he moved to the bathroom and spent so long in the shower that the water had started to run cold before he finally turned it off. He had wrapped himself in both of the towels that were in his room as well as his own towel and sat next to the heater. He didn’t move until he nearly fell off the chair and realised he was falling asleep.

He pulled himself over to the bed, not even bothering to move the towels before slipping under the quilt. It took less than a minute for him to fall asleep. Being in room 3 meant he didn’t hear Dwight start talking to himself. He didn’t hear the door to room 7 open and close, or hear the footsteps crossing the parking lot to room 2.

The first thing Shawn heard was the noise that woke him up, the same thing that woke everyone else up; a woman’s desperate scream for help that ended in the sound of glass smashing and something banging loudly against something else.

Shawn sat upright, heart pounding, and confused by the sudden awakening. It took a few seconds for his brain to catch up with his ears, and when it did his heart started beating impossibly faster. He tried to get out the bed, only for the quilt and blankets to conspire against him and tangle themselves about his legs and feet. He fell headfirst, missing the corner of the bedside table by less than half an inch and someone was pounding on his door by the time he managed to work himself free.

“Open up! C’mon, open up!” Joshua nearly fell through the doorway as Shawn yanked the door open with one hand while struggling to keep himself covered with the one towel he had managed to pull free of the insane tangle.

“What’s going on?” he asked, looking past Joshua to the small huddle of three frightened people gathered by the door, hiding under the small porch in an attempt to keep dry. None of them would meet his gaze; they were all too busy looking around at the darkness of the night that seemed to be pressing in on them.

“Didn’t you hear that scream? We’re going over to see what’s going on.” He was trying to sound tough, but Shawn could see the muscles twitching in his jaw and knew he was terrified. He was tempted to tell them to call the cops and leave everything well enough alone. In fact, the little part of his father that he could never seem to forget was working itself up into a rage at the thought of so many civilians trampling a probable crime scene.

But there was something odd about the group, something chilling him that he wasn’t awake enough to place, and he gestured to his bare chest, silently asking for time to dress. He got a flurry of nods and let the door swing closed, rushing to get clean clothes out of his bag. There was no way he was going to stop these people forcing their way into whatever room that scream had come from, but maybe he could stop them from messing any evidence up beyond all repair.

It took him less than a minute to get dressed, and the small crowd was already edging away from his door when he walked about out. He looked over them quickly, trying to calm himself by attempting to match the people to the cars he had seen on the way in. The young couple, recently married from the way he kept fiddling with his ring like he was worried it was slipping, were paired with the sensible five door family car. Sure enough, as he watched, Shawn caught the woman’s hand stray to her stomach. He wondered, probably unfairly, if that was the reason for the wedding, before moving his attention along.

An older man in a smart but slightly threadbare suit was Shawn’s most likely candidate for the old Mercedes. If he had to guess, he would go for recently divorced. It was dark, but he thought he could just pick out a tan line on the man’s ring finger. Widower was a reasonable assumption too, but Shawn liked divorcee.

And that’s when it finally hit him; Dwight’s truck was still in the parking lot, but Dwight was nowhere to be seen, and they were headed away from his room.

They started walking, Shawn somehow ended up near the front of the tiny group without actually meaning to take the lead. Joshua was walking next to him and Shawn took the opportunity to study the man. The shaking of his hands was down to more than nerves; a Shawn looked closer he saw a yellowing of the man’s eyes and redness of the rims. Thinking back, he realised he had smelt whisky when he had walked in to reception.

‘So, I have a pregnant woman and her new husband, a recently divorced man, a possible alcoholic, and a possible murder. And a missing truck driver who, under the circumstances, is looking like the most likely suspect.” No one else seemed bothered by Dwight’s absence, and Shawn couldn’t help but wonder why they hadn’t gone knocking on his door too. Joshua seemed to notice Shawn looking about.

“I knocked on your friend’s door too, but I didn’t get an answer.” He didn’t mention the master key that was in his hand and Shawn decided not to ask. They were obviously at the room the scream had come from; the door was hanging open and the window next to it had been shattered.

The other four hung back as Shawn knelt by the shards of glass lying on the floor. There were tiny smears of red on the edges of some of them, protected from the driving rain by the tiny porch that ran around the outside edge of the entire building.

“Broken from the inside, but there’s nothing lying out here to say that something was thrown through, and this looks like blood to me.” He straightened up and took a step closer to the window, being careful not to step on any of the shards he could see blood on. By craning his neck he could see most of the room.

“Obvious signs of a struggle,” he said, almost distractedly. “The furniture’s been tossed around and it looks like more blood on the floor.” He stepped back and turned to the others, only to see them staring at him like he had grown a second head.

‘Normal people are scared by things like this, Shawn!’ he mentally berated himself, annoyed by how easily he slipped into the methodical processes his dad had taught him.

“Uh, my father’s a cop,” He forced an embarrassed looking smile on to his face. “I spent a lot of time listening to him and friends rehashing old cases.” To his relief, the young woman smiled slightly, and the older man even got a look of relief on his face.

“So, you know what to do then?” This from the younger man, and Shawn made a mental note to learn everyone’s name as soon as he could.

“I’m going to go in, see if there’s anyone inside and whether they need help. If a crime have been committed then we need to avoid contaminating the evidence, so you guys should probably wait out here.”

No one looked like they wanted to argue and Shawn decided to feel grateful that the authoritative approach had worked rather than hate himself for sounding more and more like his dad with every passing second. He reached out and pushed the door open with the back of his hand, and saw immediately that the woman who had been occupying the room was far beyond help.

She was lying naked and spread eagled on the bed, bruises forming on her face, arms and legs. Bloody finger prints were visible at her wrists and ankles, giving the impression that she had been posed after she had been killed, although the amount of blood he could see soaking the mattress told him that she might have been clinging on to life as her killer manhandled her into position. Her hands were turned palm up and Shawn could see a mass of cuts that he identified as defensive wounds.

This was all taken in and processed in less than a second, his mind flashing from one point to the next. And then there was nothing else to look at except her neck, and his mind wouldn’t let him block out the all to clear cause of death. He spun away, pulling the door closed as he did, but the extra quarter of second that he had lingered had burnt the image in to his brain as surely as if it had been implanted in to his mind.

Her throat had been slashed open from side to side. Her position on the bed was slightly off centre and her head had fallen off the pillow to land at an angle, making the wound look like a grotesque parody of a clown’s smile. Her eyes were still open, glassy and already clouded with that lack of awareness so specific to death, but even so he couldn’t shake the feeling that she had been looking at him.

He forced the image to back of his mind so he could concentrate on the scared people standing in front of him. He raced to try to think of some calm and collected way of explaining to them what had happened, but the young woman chimed in again.

“She’s dead isn’t she?”

“How do you know it was a woman?” This from the older man whose voice was shaking and whose face was face was white and who most likely in the midst of full fight or flight mode.

“She was at reception when we came in asking for more towels.” The young man this time, and he stepped forward to stand protectively in front of his wife. The older man took a step forward and Shawn sighed to himself then stepped between them.

“She was murdered,” he said, his voice louder than normal, making sure everyone there heard him. “We are going to go to reception, together, and call the police. Then we’re going to go and sit in the restaurant, together, and wait for them arrive.” He lowered his voice then, looking directly at the older man.

“If anyone decides they want to cause trouble, they can stay out here and keep an eye on the body until the cops get here.” He was praying no one tried to force him to make good on his threat, he wasn’t sure he could force anyone in to doing anything at the moment. After a few seconds silence, the older man turned and headed towards reception, leaving the rest of them to hurry after him and Shawn hid a sigh of relief.

It was short lived though, as they got to reception to see the man holding the phone and tapping the cradle.

“Hello? Operator? Hello?” He slammed the phone down, but his hands were shaking so much by now that the force might have been an accident. “It’s dead. I think the storm must have knocked out the line.”

There was a confused flurry of voices, all asking “are you sure?” and “what do we do now?” and Shawn got the feeling they were directed at him.

“We carry on as planned. We go and sit in the restaurant and wait til morning. Either they’ll fix the line remotely and we’ll call as soon as they do, or they’ll come out here to fix it, and we’ll call as soon as they do.”

It didn’t take long for them to get settled; Joshua locked the door behind them when Shawn asked him to and no one questioned it. They all sat around the largest table and Shawn decided a distraction was in order.

“I just realised most of you don’t even know my name,” he said, in a bright tone of voice that any one who knew him would have pegged as fake. “It’s Shawn, Shawn Spencer. I’m from Santa Barbara, in California.” He smiled, hoping his grin didn’t look too shaky. It seemed to work.

Over the next few minutes he learnt that the young couple were Stuart and Bethan Carter from Illinois. They had gotten married 2 months ago, and found out they were expecting a month and a half ago. They were driving across as many states as they could before the baby came so they would have an adventure story to tell to their child.

The older man was Matthew Greensil from Michigan who, up until 5 month ago had been a CEO of an international wine and foods importation company. He had sold the company during his divorce, and had taken a job travelling door to door across whatever state he was sent to just to lessen the chances of bumping into his ex-wife or her new 21 year old boyfriend.

Joshua told them all he was born and raised in Oklahoma and that his uncle had owned the motel before him and that he was the one who had given it the name ‘The Rest and Peace Motel’.

“He left the place to my father when he died, but my parents weren’t interested so they signed it over to me.”

“Seems a bit unfair,” said Matthew, who was calming down now they were settled. “Why not sell the place instead of lumbering you with it?”

“I asked for it. I used to spend a week or two every summer here and I….”

The glass in the wide window spanning a quarter the wall cracked as a loud crack tore through the air.

“Get down! Now!” Shawn yelled, and everyone dove to the floor, screams and yells mingling as another hole was punched in to the window. A small trickle of dust fell from the wall as the bullet buried itself into it and someone, it might have been Stuart, yelled something about a gun. Shawn had to fight to resist the impulse to roll his eyes as he crawled forwards, making sure to keep his stomach flat to the floor the way Henry had taught him. He cautiously lifted his head so he could look over the lower sill of the window and caught a brief glimpse of a figure standing by Dwight’s truck.

Then there was a flash of light and a flare of pain ripped through him. He thought he heard someone screaming, and might have felt hands tugging on his shoulders, drawing him away from the window. Then he blacked out.

O__-__O__-__O__-__O


	2. Voyage to the Bottom of the Barrel of Human Mentality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING
> 
> Seriously- this very nearly didn't get posted anywhere, ever, at all. I was told, and I quote, "It feels more like a rape than a murder."
> 
> So for the love of all that is good, DO NOT READ if you think for one second this might trigger you.
> 
> Having said that-
> 
> This chapter is where the bad guy shows us just how very good he is at being very very bad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again- massive trigger warnings for this chapter. See the chapter summary and please please please avoid if you think it's too much for you.

Previously...

He cautiously lifted his head so he could look over the lower sill of the window and caught a brief glimpse of a figure standing by Dwight’s truck. Then there was a flash of light and a flare of pain ripped through him. He thought he heard someone screaming, and might have felt hands tugging on his shoulders, drawing him away from the window. Then he blacked out. 

 

O__-__O__-__O__-__O 

 

Earlier that night 

 

Dwight checked the knife was secure in its sheathe as left his room to get some food. He wasn’t concerned with leaving the gun in his room, but he always carried his knife with him, it was one of the first rules he had been taught.

 

He didn’t look as he opened the door to the restaurant and he nearly bumped into someone walking out. She glanced his way as he stepped to one side to let her pass, and quickly lowered her eyes to the ground. He turned to follow her progress, watching the way her pace increased, seeing the tension knotting her shoulders.

 

Something about the way she was walking caught his attention, like she thought she was too good for a place like this but wanted to hide it. Her hand darted in to her pocket to fish out her key while she was still some distance from the door to her room, and he hurried after her. She was nervous, and he was excited; it was the perfect combination and he couldn’t resist it.

 

She didn’t hear him walking up behind her, and the first she knew of his presence was when her door clicked open, and he wrapped his hands around her throat. He shoved her into the room and kicked the door shut, one hand snaking up over her mouth as she took a breath to scream.

 

“I don’t like noise,” he whispered, pressing his lips close to her ear. Her throat worked furiously under his hand as he squeezed harder, feeling her pulse throbbing under his fingers. Her hand scrabbled at his, nails biting into his skin, leaving red trails that tingled and burnt.

 

Her feet thrashed and her body tried to twist away, but he was much too strong for her to pull away. Her pulse faltered and started to slow and the muscles of her throat began to relax. Her hands stopped fighting his, grasping instead of scratching, then dropping slowly away. Her feet kept kicking for a second or two, but they were swinging more as a result of previous force than of any new exertion.

 

He held on for a moment longer, relishing the power he had over her. A few moments longer and he would be able to feel the final, desperate flurries of her pulse before it stopped. A little more pressure and he would be able to feel the muscles of her throat bend and collapse. Her life was literally in his hands; it was more intimate and exhilarating than any thing else he had experienced.

 

His heart leapt almost painfully in his chest as he let the feeling of power rush through him. A grin spread over his face and his eyes slipped shut as he buried his nose in her hair and inhaled deeply. Then he loosened his hands and let her fall unconscious to the floor.

 

A quick peek through the window told him that if anyone had heard anything, they weren’t curious about it. He grinned as his eyes swept over the still buildings. As long as it wasn’t keeping them awake, no one at motels this cheap were ever curious about anything; it was why he loved them so very much.

 

One quick tug to close the curtains, two quick twists of the wrist to lock the door, another quick tug to close the curtains on the other window, and even if anyone had been interested by the noise, they wouldn’t be able to satisfy their curiosity. Dwight turned back to the limp figure on the floor. The minute or so it had taken him to close off the room hadn’t been enough time for her to recover her senses and he stood over her, arms crossed, waiting.

 

He could be patient when it suited him, and this wouldn’t be any fun if she didn’t fight back. He had learnt very early on that if the job were too easy, it was boring. They had to cry and struggle to make it interesting. And he had gotten good at making people fight. It was skill he had discovered, a latent talent almost. While other people sang, or wrote, or taught, he had a gift for making people think they could get away from him.

 

He seemed to know instinctively when to stop to give them a wild surge of hope. Seeing that hope flicker to uncertainty made his blood sing in his ears. Watching for the exact moment the last traces of uncertainty died away to be replaced by desperate fear made his blood pound in his ears.

 

His heart was beating faster just thinking about it. It was always like this; a rush of anticipation flooding through him until he couldn’t stand still, couldn’t keep his hands from reaching towards his latest victim, but his flair for patience wouldn’t let him rush. He pushed his hands deep in his pockets and walked away to the restroom. The light was dim, but it was better than standing in the dark. Staring at his face in the mirror calmed him, grounded him. He looked for so long that his face didn’t make sense to him anymore; it was just lines and shapes.

 

A small noise caught his attention and he stepped back in to the main room to see the woman starting to stir. He watched, entranced, for just a moment or two, memorising the way each muscle seemed to move independently before remembering how to co-operate with the nerve endings of the body. A gentle moan spurred him into action and he started moving in a dance he had performed so often before that each step was burned indelibly into his mind.

 

Step one was positioning the chair away from the walls and the rest of the furniture. The room was so small this wasn’t easy, but by lifting the tiny bedside cabinet on to the bed and pushing that right up against the wall beneath the window, he managed to get enough space. He forgot to unplug the lamp and it fell to the floor and shattered, but the noise just served to excite him further. It was a harmony of music and destruction and he revelled in it.

 

Step two was uncoiling his rope and looping it around her wrists. He’d been planning on starting his work later, after he had eaten, and he hadn’t brought any rope with him. But he was too experienced for this to throw him off, and he pulled his belt free of his jeans instead. It wasn’t as flexible as rope, but he was an old hand at restraining people, and he knew how to make do.

 

Step three was lifting her into the chair and tying the rope through the back to stop her running away. With the belt this step was actually easier; he took full advantage of the buckle to tie off the ends. When he was done, he wasn’t sure even he would have been able to get out, and slipping out of restraints was another old pastime of his.

 

Her hands started to twitch as she came closer and closer to waking up, some part of her mind realising that the lack of movement was a bad thing. He stared at the edges of the belt; the harsh fabric was digging into her flesh, making it swell and redden, and he unconsciously licked his lips.

 

His own hand reached out and ran over the belt, so close to her skin, to the heat of her body, and yet not touching. This self denial made him growl and he moved to stand in front of the chair, wanting to be the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes again. While he waited, watching the roll of her head with bright eyes, he thought about the other people here with him.

 

The receptionist wouldn’t be much fun; too slow, too addled by years of drinking. Killing him would be doing him a favour. The young couple he had seen in the restaurant probably wouldn’t be anything special either. He was pretty sure the girl would hysterical type; she had that look about her. One glimpse of his girl bleeding would probably send the boy into hysterics too.

 

He almost shook his head thinking about it. When did young people become so weak? When did parents stop raising their children properly? He started to think about how disgusted his father would have been, but caught himself in time. Thinking about father was dangerous, distracting, and he needed to focus now.

 

He forced his mind back on track, to think about the older man he had seen as he had been headed to his room after registering. His shoulders had been slumped, like he was almost too tired to keep his head upright. Nothing fun there either. In front of him the woman sighed, echoing his own mental frustration at being so close to all these people, and not feeling drawn to any of them.

 

Then his eyes narrowed as a face flashed in front of them. Shawn Spencer he had said his name was. He was young, younger than woman in front of him, younger than the hysterical couple even, younger than his usual type. But there was something about him, something in his eyes and voice, something that hinted an inner knowledge, some fierce intelligence that burned a little too brightly to be hidden by his silence and nervousness.

 

The woman’s eyes fluttered open, rolled slightly, then focused on him. Her mouth opened with a gasp, ready to scream, but he was ready for that and pushed a bundle of cloth he ripped from the bed sheet into her mouth. She tossed her head, whipping it from side to side, trying to shake out the gag. Dwight let his amusement show as he watched her struggles. She was just wearing her self out, making his part in all this easier, not that she knew that yet. He could see by looking at her that she was still hoping for a way out.

 

Her struggles slowed, her breathing harsh through her nose, and still he didn’t move. Finally she stopped pulling against the belt, stopped shaking her head. Her breathing started to slow, although fear was still making her chest heave, and after a few minutes she was just sitting, watching him as he watched her.

 

Then he stepped forwards. She tried to cringe away from the hand he stretched out but she could only go so far before the belt stopped her. He ran his fingers over her cheek, then down on to her neck. Her body spasmed as he brushed against the bruises that were already forming from those few minutes before and he made sure to push down harder. He was in total control here and he wanted to make sure that she knew that.

 

He looked closer, leaning down to bring himself eye to eye with her, staring in fascination at the tears that were slipping down her cheeks. They reflected the dim light from the bulb he had left on turning them into diamonds. The image grew in his mind until a statue of glass and ice had replaced the woman in front of him.

 

He stared transfixed at the glittering form, not hearing the muffled words the real woman was trying to pronounce. A small part of him wondered if his hand shouldn’t feel cold from touching the figure, and the more he thought about it, the bigger that part of him became until the illusion crumbled to dust and he was left with just a terrified woman in front of him.

 

He took his hand away and felt a chill over his palm from the loss of the woman’s body heat. He moved to the window, wanting to look out over the parking lot, to catch sight of something to ground him in reality; but he was too careful to open the curtain back up.

 

Behind him the woman started struggling again, quietly this time, working her jaw frantically to try to dislodge the gag. She knew there were other people in the motel, but she didn’t know where. All she could do was hope that if she screamed loud enough someone would hear her.

 

Dwight turned back in time to see the gag slip slightly and he lunged forward, one hand wrapping around the woman’s mouth and the other sliding down to the belt holding her wrists. In his haste, his fingers caught the wrong end of the belt, and the knot slipped.

 

With a sudden surge of strength that he wouldn’t have thought her capable of, the woman threw herself up. Her head cracked against his jaw and he fell, dragging the belt away as he did. She gasped at the pain it caused her, losing vital seconds, seconds she could have been running, or at least screaming.

 

As she drew a deep breath and climbed to her feet, Dwight was struggling to his knees. He saw he stand, saw her chest expand as she dragged in a breath; his hand shot out and grabbed her ankle, and tugged. She fell heavily; the scream that had already started was lost as the air was driven out of her lungs by the force of her landing.

 

He pulled himself up to tower over her as he wrenched the knife out and brought it sweeping down. But she got a hand up in the way and the blade skittered over her upturned palm. The shock of the pain stole what little breath she had managed to recover, but she didn’t stop fighting.

 

He felt the familiar surge of excitement as her body bucked under his, trying to throw him off balance, even as he raised the knife again. This time she got her hand around his arm and pushed with all her might, her eyes wide and terrified and locked on the blade.

 

He wanted to yell with the sheer force of the adrenaline that was rushing through him, but she was struggling so fiercely that he didn’t dare waste the attention a yell would need. He could feel her weakening, and he could see in her face that she could feel her strength failing too.

 

He kept dragging the knife from side to side, forcing her to fight just to maintain her grip on him. Finally, after minutes that might well have only been seconds, Dwight shifted his weight and bore down with every ounce. There was a split second of frozen fear, then the woman shrieked, screaming her failure to the world, before the metal bit into her throat and the sound was smothered by steel.

 

He grabbed the handle of the knife with both hands and wrenched it to the side, splitting her throat wide open. But this wasn’t how he had pictured it, and as her rapidly weakening thrashing shook her body, he slid his arms under her, lifted her, and threw her on to the bed. A few seconds of tugging and pulling had her posed just right, and he stepped back in time to see the final vestige of life flicker across her face and die in her eyes.

 

He wanted to stay, to watch her for longer, to lay a hand on her chest and feel the warmth fade from her body, but someone must have heard her scream, and he knew he had to run. He cast a longing look at the body on the bed, his hand hovering over her for just a second, then a door slammed somewhere nearby, and he ran to the door.

 

He had lost the key for the door somewhere and knew he didn’t have time to look for it, so he drove his elbow through the window by the side of the door instead. His jeans snagged on a jagged edge of glass and he scrambled through and he sliced his hand open as he pulled the denim free. The sudden pain made him jerk away and he landed hard on his side.

 

Out of the corner of his eye he saw someone moving about and resisted the urge to swear at the glass as a wave of anger washed over him. He got back to his feet and backed up against the wall, eyes scanning the doors and windows he had in his line of sight for anymore signs of life. He counted slowly to ten, saw nothing, and stepped forward, craning his neck to look further along the row of rooms. Still nothing, and he took a cautious step to the side. No movement and no sound, and he took advantage of his position to deliver a savage kick to the door to vent his frustration.

 

He realised his mistake immediately as a crack told him he had broken the lock and the door swung open behind him. He cursed, and then froze as a light appeared in a window just a few doors down. He saw a figure move and took to his heels, cursing as he sprinted to the end of the row of buildings and skidded round the corner.

 

He had never had to run away before, he had never messed up so badly before, and he resented having to rush the kill and flee. He told himself that he could hear voices behind him, that the others at the motel were already at the woman’s room, exclaiming over the blood and the brutality. He could hear their shock and fear, and it repulsed him.

 

Every step he took reinforced his opinion of them- cattle, nothing but mindless sheep; one falls and the rest mill around in a panic, bleating about the horror of it. He ducked into a woody area and stopped, sure that he was safe from any pursuit they might be able to manage. He stared into the darkness that surrounded him and took comfort from it.

 

He had never been scared or repulsed by death. He had welcomed it into his life, and in return, he had been given the power to wield the scythe of death. His overly excited mind conjured up the voices of the people he had just run from and the shrill panicked sounds made his teeth grind. He had always killed slowly before, enjoyed the build up and the after glow. But this time he had let himself be spooked by some mindless animals and he regretted his flight.

 

A wild idea was growing in his mind, as hard as he tried to resist it, to tell himself it was insane, it still kept getting bigger and bigger.

 

‘Make them pay for spoiling your kill.’

 

He wasn’t sure whose voice it was that was whispering to him, he only knew it wasn’t his own. At first, he told himself that he left after killing for a reason, that he needed to avoid being connected to the deaths, because being connected meant being caught.

 

But the idea was seductive; it nestled in his mind and stroked his nerves until he was at fever pitch. He could feel the blood from the cut on his hand flowing over his skin, and he made believe that it was their blood, that it was fresh from the kill. He lifted his hand and stared at the trail; what should be crimson red was jet black in the moonlight and the coppery air filled his lungs.

 

His own blood started rushing loudly through his veins, driven by adrenaline and he had to force himself to calm down. If they came after him he would never hear them over the pounding of his heart in time to run. Deep breath followed deep breath and he felt himself slowly coming back under control.

 

He strained his ears but didn’t hear anything, and risked peering round the trunk of the nearest tree. The stretch of ground he had just run across was empty, and the only light he could see from the motel seemed to be coming from the restaurant.

 

So, they had found the body and gathered themselves in the restaurant to fuss over the shock and horror of it. A smile spread slowly across his face as he pictured them all grouped together, like fish in a barrel. His heart gave a thud and his stomach twisted in exhilaration at the thought of how many there were to kill, and how easy it would be to do it.

 

His mind was filled with the shining colours of blood, the deep dark red of the oxygen rich blood that he would spill from their fragile, pale skin. His fingers curled around the handle of the knife and he pictured the scene as he started walking back towards the light that marked the motel.

 

As he got closer he could see figures silhouetted against the curtain at the bottom of the window; they were sitting at the tables. Dwight nearly laughed. A woman has just been found brutally slain, so naturally a sit down is in order. Another chuckle escaped him as he ducked into the shadows of the overhang and made his way passed the doors to his room.

 

“Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see the looks on your faces,” he sung to himself, keeping his voice low. “But seeing you bleed will be every bit as enjoyable.”

 

He stumbled slightly as hi fished out his room key, but he was too far away from the restaurant for anyone to hear, and he slipped unnoticed in to the darkened room, moving straight to the small cabinet where he’d left his gun.

 

The cold metal felt almost warm to him and he ran his fingers lovingly over the barrel before picking up both the gun and spare magazine lying next to it. Before he had gone out earlier he had emptied and reloaded the spare so the bullet he had slipped into his pocket would be the first to be fired when he reloaded. Putting the magazine in his jacket pocket, he slipped back out of the room, not bothering to lock it; all he cared about was already back with him.

 

Then he headed over to his truck, happy to see that it was in line with the restaurant; on the off chance that anyone else was armed, he could use the driver’s door for cover.

 

The first shot sent all the shadowy figures diving for the floor and he heard a voice he recognized yell “get down! Now!” That was the Shawn kid, the one the bullet was for, and he fired of another round before ejecting the still mostly full magazine and replacing it with the one from his pocket. Then he waited, sure that someone would try to look and see where the shots were coming from, and positive that that someone would be Shawn.

 

Sure enough, the bottom of the curtain moved slightly as a head cautiously lifted itself over the height window ledge. No doubt he thought the gap between the bottom of the window and the bottom of the curtain meant nothing would move and alert the shooter, but the gap was smaller than he thought.

 

Dwight took aim quicker than some professionals could, zeroing in on the slight movement and squeezing the trigger in the same second. The dark shape vanished and a high-pitched scream of “Shawn!” told him he had been dead on target.

 

Something about that kid had annoyed him, put him in mind of police offices and made him uncomfortable. He lowered the gun and stepped away from the truck, willing to stake his life on the gamble that he was the only one armed. He stayed ready, just in case, but didn’t slow his advance.

 

Every second was another step closer to the restaurant, closer to the blood he had spilled. He couldn’t wait to see it and had to stop himself from breaking into a run, but finally he was at the door. He didn’t bother to see if it were locked or not, he was pretty sure it would be, so he lashed out with his foot and splintered the door around the lock.

 

Now he raised the gun again, not wanting to be taken by surprise by some foolhardy attack. But as he stepped through the door he lost every bit of the composure he had fought so hard to keep.

 

The room was empty.

 

He hurried through it to check the kitchen and the supply room, but both were empty. He could feel the rage rising and this time he didn’t bother to hold it in. The only sign that anyone had been in the restaurant was a smear of blood near the window and he yelled to the cowards as he ransacked the room looking for any trace of them.

 

“When I find you,” he growled to himself, knocking over a table. “When I find you I will make you pay in tears of pain before you die!” he screamed, not caring if they were close enough to hear him or not.

 

And in the laundry room, off to the side of the kitchen, the four people who were conscious huddled together and held back cries of terror, and hoped and prayed that the young man who had seemed to know what to do would wake up soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This wasn't as hard to write as it probably should have been. It probably helped that I didn't actually realise what I had here until it was mostly finished. One more chapter to go, folks.


	3. The Closest Thing An Open Story Can Have To An End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seeing as this has been completed on another archive it's inexcusable that it's taken me this long to get the last chapter added here. My only possible explanation is that copying from psychfic to here messes up the formatting for some reason and it takes ages to get it sorted.
> 
> There's some tension in the chapter, nothing at all like that previous chapter. I doubt I will ever write something like that again.

His head was literally killing him. He could feel something warm trickling down the side of his face and decided from the uncomfortable rolling in his stomach that he had been hurt, and was losing blood. He wanted to groan to attract someone’s attention, but an overwhelming wave of fear stole his breath and made him bite down on the sound.

‘Attracting attention is bad,’ his mind screamed, but it chose not to tell him why. He settled for straining his ears to try to make out if anyone was near him. All he could hear was an ugly harsh sound. It took several seconds for him to realise that it was someone gasping for breath.

‘But if I’m hurt then I must be in hospital. Why are people gasping in hospital? Isn’t that what oxygen’s for?’ Before the thought was even finished he was registering how cold he was, how hard whatever it was he was laying on felt. It was more like a floor than a bed. Something clicked in his mind, he remembered falling. Distantly he heard a sound like breaking glass, and the rasping breaths reached a new height of urgency.

He pondered the idea that it might not be an ailment like asthma for less than half a second before it all came flooding back. The murdered woman, the other guests, the gunshots, Dwight.

He forced himself to sit up so suddenly his head didn’t so much spin as twist violently and he an insight into the view the girl from the exorcist would have had of her bedroom. There were smothered gasps from around him and he ignored the dangerous way the room was tilting to look at the nearest blurred shape he could attribute human form to.

“Fill me in,” he whispered, more from a lack of strength than anything, but the reply was whispered too.

“We’re in the laundry room. It’s not visible from the restaurant or kitchen. Joshua thought we might be safe here. Dwight’s looking for us now. We thought you…” Shawn had only just managed to figure out the whisperer was both female and the source of the breathing when she trailed off, replaced by more gasping.

‘Bethan.’ He remembered the other names and faces in a mere fraction of a moment and spoke louder, more confident of himself now.

“Bullet grazed my head?” A chorus of “yes” and “uh huh” answered him, just his luck that no one in the group had any sort of medical knowledge. Inwardly he cringed at the responsibility he could feel settling on his shoulders and wished for Gus or even Henry. Outwardly he took as deep a breath as his still protesting stomach would allow to steady himself.

“Then if that’s all that’s wrong with me, I’ll be fine.” He didn’t feel as sure as he sounded, but how he felt didn’t matter. Keeping people alive was what was important.

“We can’t stay here, we’re too close to him.” Another sound of breaking, this time louder, closer emphasized his point. “If no one else is hurt then we have to move.”

He turned to where he thought Joshua was, helped by the fact that everyone had moved closer to him when he started talking, and was happy to see he figure right and didn’t have to look round any more.

“What’s close to this place?”

Joshua looked like he was about to be sick, his face was pale and his hands were shaking so much that even Shawn’s blurry vision didn’t miss the tremors.

“Joshua?” Shawn didn’t dare try to stand up, so he stretched out a hand and caught the man’s ankle, the only part of him he could easily reach. “I know this is scary, but we need to move. And once we get away, this will all be over.”

“There’s nothing.” Joshua’s voice shook and Shawn could see the strain on the older man’s face as he struggled to sound calm and keep quiet. “A few patches of plants and trees, and road. That’s it for almost twenty miles.” His voice rose slightly as he spoke despite his best efforts, leading to a hissed “shush” and a flurry of frantic hand gestures.

Shawn ignored it, keeping his hand tight on Joshua’s ankle, hoping to keep the man grounded.

“What about here at the motel? There’s two lines of rooms opposite each other facing the parking lot, the reception area at one end, and the restaurant and kitchen behind that with a storage room off to the side, and this place. Right?”

Shawn was hoping for more information, but Joshua just nodded. He was pressing his lips so tightly together they had gone white and Shawn was getting more and more concerned about the man, but he had noticed something no one else seemed to have picked up on, and he knew he couldn’t afford to tiptoe round anyone now.

“Is there anything else here? Anything at all?” He squeezed the ankle, feeling panic rising in himself as seconds ticked quietly away. The only response he got was a shake of the head.

“We have to move. If there’s no where to hide, we’ll have to just run.” He tried to make himself sound confident, but was pretty sure he failed miserably. “It wont be long before Dwight finds us.”

He was expecting someone to question him, but to his surprise no one reacted at all. He risked the dizziness to cast a glance around the room, and saw the same look on everyone’s face- disbelief.

“There’s nothing being broken anymore,” he pressed, needing them to understand the urgency, the danger. “Most likely, that’s because Dwight has either calmed down or broken everything he can break. Either way that means he’s gonna be looking properly now, efficiently.”

“But he wont know we’re here,” Stuart whispered, sounding furious rather than scared.

“How can he think we’re any where else?” and Shawn really was furious. “To get to the rooms we would have had to go past him, he would have seen us.”

“But he wont know we came out here ‘cause we hid the door. Joshua piled boxes in front of it and climbed out through the window.”

“That doesn’t make this whole building invisible!” Shawn tried to hide that he felt like he was the only one in the room with any semblance of sense, but a patronising tone leaked into his whisper, making him sound angry and condescending, even to himself.

He forced himself to stop, to take three valuable seconds and breath in, focusing on the feeling of his lungs expanding, ignoring the reawakening of the nausea that it promoted.

‘They’re scared out of their minds. And so are you, so give them a break.’

“As soon as Dwight starts poking around outside of the restaurant he’s going to see this place, that’s if he doesn’t see it through the same window Joshua slipped through. We need to be out of here when that happens.”

He finally let go of Joshua’s ankle and tried to push himself off the floor, only for the dizziness that had been fading to make a vicious comeback. He managed to get to his knees before starting to topple over. Hands grabbed him, helped him to his feet, and he came face to face with the only window in the dark little laundry room.

Between the darkness outside and the dust on the window he couldn’t make out anything outside.

“Does this window open on to the parking lot or to the back?”

“The back.”

“So that’s the way out.” He turned, careful to move slowly. “At least this way we don’t have to try to sneak past Dwight. There’s no lock on the inside of this door, so it locks on the outside right?” He didn’t wait for confirmation before continuing. “We wait til he’s inside, slip round, slam the door, and run for it.”

The four people looking back at him looked physically sick at the prospect, and Matthew even opened his mouth but Shawn didn’t give him the chance to argue.

“If he finds us, he will kill us. I think we can all agree there’s no doubt about that. So we have to go.”

***

 

Shawn dropped to the ground hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs, but fought to ignore the feeling. He was pretty sure Dwight would be outside by now, and every time they moved, they were running the risk of being overheard. He just wished the torrential rain from earlier hadn’t stopped; they could use all the cover they could get.

It was just Matthew in the room now and Bethan bent to help Shawn to his feet while Stuart turned to help Matthew. Joshua was already creeping to the end of the wall, ready to slam the door as soon as Dwight walked in.

Shawn knew he was making everyone take a big risk; there was no way of guaranteeing that Dwight would walk into the laundry room. In fact, there was every possibility that he would circle the building once before going in to see if they were hiding behind it. He might even decide to slam the door to try to trap them. If he didn’t walk straight in, Shawn knew they were all in very real trouble.

A quiet gasp made Shawn and Bethan both jump- to their adrenaline and fear enhanced senses, it sounded like a scream. Matthew’s shirt was caught on something; he was struggling to pull it free and Stuart was trying to help by pulling harder, but then something else happened. A door slammed.

Joshua came running back to them, waving a key.

“He’s in there, and it’s locked. We have to move now!” Then his eyes went wide as he saw Matthew still hanging out the window.

“Beth, Josh, get moving,” Shawn ordered in a whisper, taking his arm away from Bethan. “Stuart, go with them. I’ll help Matt.” He knew they only had seconds before Dwight spotted the legs waving in the air. The other three took off at a run and Shawn slipped his hands under Matthew’s arms.

“I’m gonna tug as hard as I can,” he whispered, his lips practically touching the man’s ear and his words tripping over each other. “You push at the same time. Now!” But as both men started straining, a shout sounded and less than two seconds later, just as Shawn felt Matthew move forward, he gave a cry and his face was transformed by terror.

“He’s got my ankle! Oh god! Oh god no!”

Shawn tightened his grip and put one foot against the bottom of the wall, using it as leverage, feeling every beat of his heart in his throbbing head.

“Help me, Shawn! Please! Please don’t let me go!” Matthew was struggling, kicking his feet so hard that his whole body was jerking. His hands were wrapped so tightly around Shawn’s arms that every move he made was making Shawn shake too; cruel and bitter irony stepped in, and Matthew Greensil’s life was taken from him because of his own fight to hang on to it.

His panic finally broke free and he started thrashing his whole body back and fore; Shawn clung to him, but the frantic movement loosened his grip and he didn’t dare take a moment to readjust it. He was thrown off balance by the almost convulsive movements, his foot slipped, what little leverage he had was lost, and Matthew was dragged back into the laundry room.

The window slammed shut as Matthew’s hands slid off the frame and Shawn was thrown backwards. He thought he could hear Joshua and the Carter’s calling for him to run, but as hard as he tried he just couldn’t take his eyes off the dirty pane of glass. He started to crawl backwards, his hands pulling him along, his heels digging into the muddy ground and pushing, kicking up small mounds of damp clay like dirt as they did.

But his eyes were still locked on the window. Of the five people alive in the motel who weren’t seriously unstable homicidal maniacs, Shawn was pretty sure he was the only one who would have been able to tell the difference between arterial spray and cast off from a weapon or wound. The dark arch that appeared over the glass couldn’t possibly be anything other than arterial; Dwight had slit Matthew’s throat. That thought spurred Shawn into action and he flipped to his front, got his feet under him, and ran.

He was hoping and praying that Dwight would prefer to go through the door rather than trying to climb out the window but he didn’t think he was that lucky. Joshua and Stuart and Bethan were standing in a group, unsure of what to do next and Shawn felt like groaning. He didn’t stop running as he reached them, just beckoned and kept moving, and hoped they were following.

When he reached his room he skidded to a halt, ripped his pocket pulling out the key, and nearly snapped the key in the lock before it would turn. He wanted nothing more than to hide under the bed and wait until morning; when he was younger he would hide under the bed when he had a nightmare and wait for one of his parents to come in in the morning and find him.

But the three terrified people in the room with him meant he couldn’t hide away, even if there were a chance that rolling under the bed would have kept him safe. He peeked out through the slightly ajar door and saw Dwight coming round the side of the restaurant.

‘He must have broken the door down after all.’ For a split second, Shawn wondered why he hadn’t heard the door break, then dismissed the thought as unimportant and forced himself to focus.

“We need a diversion,” he muttered, more to himself than to others. “If he sees one of us, the others could get away. There’s a patch of trees by the side of the road. Duck into them and head down the embankment. Too obvious to hide there, but with a good head start…”

He was startled out of his musing by Joshua’s voice.

“I was on the track team in my senior year. Guess that means I’m nominated to be the distraction huh?” He seemed different somehow, and Shawn realised he was looking at man who was resigned to death.

“I’ll be able to get further away than any of you wont I?”

“Not if he starts shooting.” Bethan gave a strangled sob as she said those five words and Shawn knew immediately, and was terrified by, what he was about to do. But she was pregnant, she had to get away, and she would need her husband.

“You and I both, Josh,” he said, putting such certainty into his voice that he thought he might even have been able to fool his dad. “Bethan and Stuart will need as much time as we can get them if they’re gonna stand a chance of getting away.”

Bethan tried to argue, but Shawn stopped her before she could do more than open her mouth.

“If you and Stu get away, that’s three people saved, and two of them can testify against Dwight and get him put away.” He managed to dredge up a grin from somewhere before peeking round the door again to check how close Dwight was. He seemed to be headed towards his truck and Shawn took the chance to whisper a few directions to the terrified couple, hoping to give them as good a chance of survival as he could possibly manage. He looked out again and saw the drivers’ door open on the truck.

“Now could be our only chance. C’mon!” And before anyone could object he ran out of the door and sprinted across to the room opposite. Joshua was right behind him, struggling with his master key, tugging it from his pocket just as they both reached the closed door. They slipped through the moment it was open and the truck door slammed just as Shawn pushed the door nearly closed.

“He’s checking every room,” he whispered to Joshua as a crack echoed over the sound of the wind that had picked up. “He’s breaking down the doors.”

Shawn thought furiously, plotting the distraction, trying to plan how to keep Dwight’s attention once he saw them. Every plan he came up with ended with him and Joshua lying dead on the wet ground, and Stuart and Bethan being hunted like animals through the sparse underbrush along side the road. Worse case scenarios had them getting gunned down before they even made it to the road.

His heart started pounding and for the first time in what seemed like an age, he remembered a bullet had grazed his head earlier. His eyes lost their focus and the room swam alarmingly, reminding him that lack of food, lack of sleep, and a massive overdose of adrenaline was not a good mix.

‘Five more minutes,’ he promised himself. ‘After that, one way or another, this’ll be all over.’ A picture abruptly appeared in his mind’s eye and he took a deep breath and held it to force back the sob that threatened to escape. For a second he was back in Santa Barbara, standing outside the old family home that no longer had a family to house. His dad was pleading with him to stay just one more day, to think about what he was doing, but Shawn hadn’t listened to his father for a long time and wasn’t about to start now.

In the background, practically hidden in the shadow throw by a tree that had once held a rickety tree house, Gus was watching the father and son parting. He had said his goodbyes to his best friend earlier that day, but hadn’t been able to let him leave without seeing him off. Shawn hadn’t seen him until he had already pulled away and he couldn’t stop without his father thinking he had changed his mind. The image he saw now was the reflection he had seen in the Norton’s wing mirror as he revved the engine and reached the end of the street- his father and his best friend were standing at opposite ends of the Spencer property, both staring at the same thing, both with the same expression of loss on their faces.

“I’m so sorry,” Shawn whispered, too quietly for Joshua to hear him. “Please don’t forget about me.”

Then he straightened his back.

“We’ll have to split up. I’ll go out the back, you dive out the front; if we time it right, we can act as distractions for each other as well as for them. He won’t know who to aim at first and we might get a few extra seconds out of it.”

Joshua just nodded and swallowed hard. He was pale and shaking, but the look in his eyes was one of determination and Shawn suddenly realised he didn’t even know if the man standing before him had anyone who would miss him after this. A sick feeling settled in the pit of his stomach as he contemplated their chances of being discovered. Images of bloated corpses and swarms of flies and maggots popped into his mind quicker than he could stop them.

How long would it take before his dad stopped looking for him? How long would Gus spend trying to convince people that something bad had happened? He glanced across the parking lot and convinced himself he could make out two sets of eyes locked on the room door. Dwight was getting closer.

“I’ll go out first,” he decided. “You come out after me then I’ll try and get close to him to make him turn around again. Stu and Beth can run out then, just signal to them to stay put when you first come through door, got it?”

He didn’t wait for any kind of response before heading to the bathroom and wrenching the window open. He never would have thought that sneaking out of the house would have been preparing him for his ultimate act of distracting a homicidal manic but here he was, shimmying through the second window of the night, just like he had whenever he’d been grounded.

He wanted to laugh at the memories, or cringe in terror at his actions, but he landed on the ground, picked himself up, and moved to the edge of the building. He allowed himself half a second to wonder why the rooms had been built in groups of three rather than in one long row, another half a second to thank whoever the architect was for making his plan possible, then stepped forward.

His heart froze at the sight that greeted him.

Joshua was pinned up against the wall with Dwight’s hands wrapped around his neck. Even as he stood frozen Shawn could see the whiteness of the killer knuckles as he squeezed with all his strength. Some clinical part of his mind told him that nothing could save Joshua now, that is was likely his windpipe was crushed beyond repair.

His thoughts tried to drift off to ponder things like tracheotomies but he ignored its wanderings and threw himself forwards with a wild yell. Dwight let Joshua drop and turned towards Shawn with a look of disbelief that morphed into a sadistic grin. He took a step forwards and Shawn skidded to a stop. Less than a yard and half separated the two men and they stood while a moment or two dragged by.

Then Dwight lunged forward, Shawn dodged, and they both took to their heels. Shawn didn’t dare look back to see if Stuart and Beth had left their room yet, he just hoped with all his heart they had. He was so focused on running that he didn’t realise Dwight had stopped. Then all he knew was the pain erupting in his side, dropping him to the ground. He caught his head hard on a rock, waves of agony flowing down to meet the screaming nerves in his side and making his whole body tense and shake.

The darkness that was creeping over his vision had nothing to do with Dwight standing over him, it was oblivion and Shawn was certain if he fell into it, it would never let him go. He fought as hard as he could, trying with everything he had to cling on.

A voice rumbling in his ear made him jump and the shock nearly sent him spiralling down into the void.

“Three down, two to go.”

The hulking figure grew even more distant and Shawn had just enough time to regret not being able to save anyone before his strength gave out and he let himself sink down.

***

It didn’t last long. The rain had started again and the cold water brought him back to reality mere seconds after he had let his eyes drift closed. He struggled to lift himself, worried that Dwight had left him alive to follow Stuart and Beth, but he didn’t see anyone as he dragged himself to his feet.

The pain running along his left side was almost more than he could bear, but he couldn’t stop. Dwight would kill the Carters and then come after him. For the first time since being so rudely awoken, Shawn admitted to himself that he honestly didn’t know what to do.

He hobbled forwards, trying to force his uncooperative body to run when all it really wanted to do was lay down and stay very, very still. He thought he could see something moving and headed towards it, only to freeze when he heard a shout behind him.

He didn’t want to turn, to see what he knew he was going to see, but he couldn’t stop himself, and his head moved to the side, followed by the rest of his body as his eyes strained to see through the rain. Sure enough, he saw figures dashing through the rain, and cursed violently as he saw where they were going. Despite the fact that Shawn had warned them against it not five minutes ago, Stuart and Beth were headed for their car.

Shawn tried to get to them but his body decided abruptly that enough was enough, and he fell helplessly by the edge of the motel’s sign. He opened his mouth to call to them, desperate to get their attention and tell them to run, but the passenger side door slammed shut, cutting of his yell.

He strained his head to look past the sign and caught a glimpse of Stuart’s head as he ducked round to the driver’s side. Shawn’s hands slipped as he tried to drag them under himself so he could back to his feet, but the sight of another figure, slightly darker than the surrounding shadows, made him freeze.

It had to be Dwight- there was no one else it could be. He had seen Stuart and Bethan, there was no way he could have missed them; the car and its occupants were faintly lit by the motel’s sign. Shawn felt like laughing at the irony- the two people with the most reason to hide being in the only bright area for twenty miles- but the sound that escaped him was more like a sob, and he bit his lip savagely to catch anymore noise. The voice that he had been listening to all night told him there was no point in attracting any more attention to himself.

‘No reason to make it easy for Dwight to find you like those idiots.’

He winced at the word ‘idiots’; they were good people who didn’t deserve to be caught up in something as hideous as this night had become. His inner- voice that had started out sounding so much like his father that it had made him homesick, now sounded so cold and heartless that Shawn could barely recognise it as human.

‘They were dead the second they started towards the cars.’

As if to prove his bitter internal monologue right, a shot sounded, followed so quickly by breaking glass and a terrified scream that all three screams seemed to merge into one confused, atonal noise. Shawn recoiled under the noise, curled up on himself, squeezed his eyes shut, clamped his hands over his ears, and tried not to hear the ignition sputter and die as Stuart’s panicked fumbling flooded the engine. Mechanical coughs now- Stuart was still trying to get the engine to turn over, even as Bethan screamed again. Shawn could see it all so clearly in his minds’ eye that he could didn’t even need the muffled sound he could still hear to know exactly what was going on.

Dwight had lowered his gun when he heard the engine choke and was walking towards the car, moving slowly but inexorably. Bethan was crying now, begging Stuart to get the car started and pleaded with Dwight to leave them alone, to let her unborn baby live. Her words were running together, tripping over each other. Stuart was alternating screaming at the car and threatening Dwight, and Shawn was sure Dwight was smiling in amusement at the thought of Stuart trying to be intimidating. It wouldn’t be long now; Shawn took a deep breath an held it by sinking his teeth into his lower lip, not even feeling the blood trickle down his chin.

Any second now. Any second now. Any second now.

The shot echoed loudly, sounding magnified somehow. In the abrupt silence that followed, Shawn realised it had actually been two shots, fired so closely that even with all the hours of shooting practice he had behind him, he couldn’t separate the two sounds. Stuart and Bethan were dead, their child with them, and now he was the only one left.

He should get up and run, find somewhere to hide, do anything other than what he was doing: lying on the floor in the fetal position, shaking from the strain of trying not to cry. Somewhere a part of him wondered where Dwight was and what he was doing, but the rest of him was losing the battle against shock and just didn’t give a damn anymore.

He heard a squeak, heard a door slam, but couldn’t connect the sounds to anything. Even when he heard the ignition catch, the roar of the engine too loud to belong to anything other than Dwight’s truck, all he could think was, ‘finally, it’s my turn.’

The engine’s roar grew louder and louder, then faded and finally died away. Shawn would never know how long he had lain there, tense in the expectation of death, and numb from the hours of terror and pain. It was the flickering that finally caught his minds’ attention. Somewhere in the night was an unsteady light, casting shapes that gyrated on this inside of his eyelids. His natural curiosity started to overcome the shock, and finally, with an aching slowness that still seemed recklessly fast to him, Shawn opened his eyes again.

It was a fire. He shifted to the side to look past the support beam he had fallen behind without straining his neck, but, dazed and disorientated, it took countless moments for him to process what he was seeing. Stuart and Bethan’s car was on fire, their bodies obscured by the flames and smoke. Belatedly Shawn thought to look for Dwight and the truck, but it had vanished. He closed his eyes and dropped his head again.

‘Where did he go? Why did he go? Where did he go? Why did he go? Where did he go?’

His mind locked itself into a circle, taking comfort from the simplicity of only asking questions instead of trying to answer them too. But some part of him, some resilient part of his brain that he had never suspected he had was still functioning.

“Three down.”

The recall was so acute that Shawn’s whole body spasmed and he gasped in shock, making his head spin, sure that he was going to find Dwight standing over him. He looked around wildly, not seeing anything that looked even slightly like a human shape, but helplessly unable to stop looking. It wasn’t until he heard the voice again that he realised it was just a memory.

“Three down.”

He dropped to his knees to try ease the pain in his head, to try to think. Shawn had assumed Dwight was talking about the dead woman, Joshua, and Matthew, but what if he wasn’t? What if he had thought Shawn was dead too and was actually talking about Joshua, Matthew, and him? That would mean Dwight really had left, that he thought he had killed everyone. That would mean that by some miracle, he had escaped.

And suddenly a wild surge of adrenaline washed through every cell of Shawn’s battered body. He climbed to his feet again, not even noticing the way his legs shook and his vision swam. He started to run, not even caring about the possibility that Dwight might be playing with him, might be lurking in some impossibly out of sight hiding place waiting for Shawn to reveal himself.

If he were going to get killed, he would rather die thinking he had survived; somehow, indescribably and inexplicably, that seemed like a really good way to go.

The further he ran the clearer it became- Dwight really had gone. There was a bitterness within Shawn that he didn’t want to look too closely at. 'Shawn Spencer, sole survivor' was an empty title to someone who thought he could have saved everyone, and Shawn had been trained by one of Santa Barbara’s finest; he should have saved them.

But he knew he couldn’t think about that now. For the first time since Joshua had knocked on his door, Shawn thought about himself. He had survived, and he was going to see to it that Dwight paid for the lives he had stolen. But Shawn’s enthusiasm was short lived. His legs gave out after less that a minute of what felt like running, but was really nothing more than a fatigued stagger.

The fall was so sudden, Shawn was sure he had been shot again. He tried to climb back to his feet, screaming at himself to run away, and in his imagination, he did. His consciousness slipped away and in his mind’s eye he was still running through the pre dawn light. The flare from the fire was still lighting the way, and the screams he had heard were chasing him into the darkness.

***

 

He smiled to himself as he drove, the wind from the open window cooling his sweat soaked skin. He had crossed the border more than an hour back without seeing so much as a scrawny jackrabbit, let alone another human being. He let his mind travel back over the events of the last night and his smile grew even bigger.

Those idiots had actually thought they could escape from him. He had piled all the bodies in the car and set it alight, knowing full well that it would take the authorities so long to figure out what had happened that night that they would never find him.

A face flashed in his mind and the smile dropped off his face. He hadn’t been able to find that damned Shawn. He was sure the kid was dead; there had been too much blood for him to have survived the bullet. But even so, the mere fact that he hadn’t found the body was aggravating to him. He had wanted to stay and look, but he had a strict policy- once the fire is started, leave. It had served him too well in the past for him to start tempting fate by screwing with it now.

A sign came into sight and he forgot all about Shawn as he read it. The Garden of Memories Rest Stop was only 15 miles away and then he could get some rest. It would be a quiet night, he decided. After the excitement of the Rest and Peace Motel, he could do with a bit of a break.

The remaining miles passed quickly enough and as the battered truck pulled into the parking lot Dwight let the smile return to his face. What difference could one dead body make anyway?

***

The next few days were a jumble of sounds and smells and faces that he just couldn’t assign any sort of description to. Eventually, after about a week of slipping in and out of consciousness and another three days of fighting off a postoperative infection, Shawn finally woke up again.

The police were waiting for him and the questions started almost as soon as he opened his eyes. He could read the suspicion in their eyes and willingly waved off his doctor’s concern about his strength to give his statement. He watched the expressions of the officers go from hard and suspicious to almost incredulous as they heard about the wild whim of fate that had hidden his inert body from the killer.

It took Shawn almost five hours to go through the entire story and it wasn’t until the cops left that he realised that not only did he not have a last name to go with Dwight, but he didn’t even know if Dwight was the man’s real name. And even if it was, how much difference would it make if they had his real first name to go by?

Shawn lay in the hospital bed, itching to call his dad, but not willing to talk to him until he could tell him there was no need to worry, and thought of all the places Dwight could have gone. Late one night, as he was relieving the sight of Matthew’s blood spraying over the window once again, he suddenly realised that it was useless- whoever Dwight was, he had gotten away with murder, and there was nothing that could be done to bring him justice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there you have it. A random little throw away sentance (I want hitchhiking!Shawn) and this monster appeared, nearly fully formed in my mind. Somehow. Safe to say my mind is a scary kinda place sometimes. 
> 
> How'd I do?


End file.
